Steve B. Howard's Blog, page 139

Thanks again for reading my stuff.

Thanks again for reading my stuff. I don’t surf much, but even though I know statistically a shark attack is extremely unlikely, they are always on my mind when I’m in the water. Surfing in Nor Cal was the worst. Gray murky water in Great White breeding grounds was not a fun place to surf, lol.

Beyond the Break Lie My Broken Dreams

“sea waves” by Marcus Dall Col on Unsplash

He paddles out of the calm marina into the dark open ocean chop that chills him despite his thick wet suit. His long board cuts cleanly through the water with each powerful stroke. Four hundred yards away a small red light atop a buoy bobs in time to the current. He pulls hard towards it. A typhoon south of Kyushu is pushing huge waves over the break, but he can’t see them in the early morning darkness yet. He can hear the roar though. Out to sea the horizon is just starting to turn blue.

As he makes his way to the buoy, he hears his father’s voice in his head:

“Hiro, this is your last year of goofing off. You had seven years of university, five in Hawaii. Time to put that MBA to use. The family business is waiting for you to take the reins.”

That was in June at the start of summer vacation. Hiro had spent all of July surfing as many of the famous California breaks as he could. At Mavericks, he’d fallen on a twenty-eight foot wave, the biggest he’d ever ridden, and was held under for over a minute. He didn’t surf for four days after that and nearly flew home early, but decided the risk was worth the extra time he would spend still free from what awaited him at home. In August, he was in Baja California catching his final wave of the summer.

A week later, he landed back in Japan and made his way south from Narita on the Shinkansen to Oita, watching the mix of bamboo forests, square rice fields, evergreen covered mountains, the dark blue of the Pacific, and all the villages, small towns, and massive squat cities with their temples, shrines, modern houses and skyscrapers tucked in between flash past in the window.

The week long Buddhist Obon holiday had already started, a time when most Japanese people traditionally went home to visit their families and honor relatives and ancestors who had passed. At Fukuoka, he changed to a local train and headed south towards his home town, but he didn’t stop there. His parents didn’t even know he was in Japan yet.

Instead, he kept going south to the south end of the island that jutted out into the Pacific. Hiro had come to this small fishing village three days ago and rented a hotel room, a long board, and a wet suit. He had originally planned to go straight to Oita to his parent’s home, but in Hakata Station in Fukuoka he’d seen the approaching typhoon on the weather report and knew if he timed it just right he could surf some monster waves to finish out the summer, monsters like the one at Mavericks or possibly bigger.

He reached the buoy and used his leash to tie his board to the small metal ladder before climbing to the top. He had surfed this spot one time with a friend about a year before he left for America. That time they had both floated together next to the buoy in the darkness waiting for dawn so they could paddle to the break. But after waiting half an hour they had felt something big cruise just below the surface under their boards. They never saw it, but whatever it was it was big enough to spook both of them up the buoy ladder until the sun was well above the horizon. Bull sharks and Mako weren’t unknown in these waters and Hiro had been nervous the rest of the day. He decided not to take any chances and stayed on top of the buoy in the cold wind.

His second year in college at the Honolulu Community College had nearly been his last. Three times he received progress probation notices because his GPA had fallen so low. He was surfing every day, all day and barely studied. The Pipeline Masters had been legendary that year and Hiro dreamed of turning pro. Surfing friends kept saying, “Ah yeah, Hiro shredding better all the time man,” which fueled his dreams.

When he had to spend an extra year at community college because he didn’t have enough credits to transfer to U of Hawaii his mother sent him a short letter that ended,

“Your father and I should have never taken you to Hawaii as a young boy. Learning to surf at that beach resort in Waikiki has been your downfall in life.”

The rest of that year Hiro barely surfed. And only at Waimea and only during its biggest and most dangerous swells. He would just drop in every chance he got onto those mountains of water and ride straight through or eat it. No shredding, no passion, just reckless fury down the murderous faces.

Three years later, he graduated from the University of Hawaii and applied for an MBA program at a small college in southern California. He spent those two years dug into his studies and working part time for a Japanese import/export business in Japan Town in LA.

“Good Hiro,” his father said. “Learn the business and come home and take your place here with us.”

On the weekends he had driven his battered old ’66 VW van up down the coast surfing every break the locals would let him. Any extra money he saved so he could spend his last summer surfing every break from Santa Cruz to Baja.

The sun was up enough now that Hiro could see the break clearly. He watched dumbfounded the gigantic shoulder of a wave rolled across the reef and broke five hundred yards later on shore. “Triple overhead at least,” he thought to himself. Moments later one twice that big rolled through and the first pangs of fear shuddered through his body. But he climbed down the ladder and untied his board.

“One more wave, one more monster wave and then I’m done,” he thought as he paddled slowly towards the break.

Beyond the Break Lie My Broken Dreams was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thanks for reading and commenting. I appreciate it.

Thanks for reading and commenting. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much for the high praise.

Thanks so much for the high praise. Always good to hear it from another writer I really admire. Thanks for publishing my stuff.

Thanks so much for reading, commenting and clapping. His book Sapiens is a great read as well.

Thanks so much for reading, commenting and clapping. His book Sapiens is a great read as well.

When the Smoke Clears

“two firefighters walking on burned trees covered with smoke” by Benjamin Kerensa on Unsplash

When the smoke clears will
there be the smoldering ruins
of a vast and once gold tinted
empire?

Will the burned and scorched
shoulder bones of a Titan
blackened by the fires that burned
so bright in heart lay among
the broken glass and seared
concrete?

Or will it just be a noisy little
smudge pot whose rancid smoke
clouded far more than it could
possibly reach?

When the Smoke Clears was originally published in Publishous on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jousting Literary Windmills Part 2

So I’m learning a new skill (sort of). I’m converting my ebooks into paperbacks on Kindle/Amazon! And, (GASP) it’s even available on Amazon Japan!!!! If you decided to throw me a bone, or seven, please write a quick review after you read it. Thanks for supporting my on-going efforts to escape from my day job.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/172918443X

Thanks so much for reading and commenting.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting. May you live in interesting times is the old Chinese curse/blessing and we are definitely there right now.

Thanks so much for reading it and commenting.

Thanks so much for reading it and commenting. Japan deserves its rep as a safe country of course, but messed up shit like this does go down every now and then.

Homo Deus and My Head-Spinning Moments

“tilt shift lens photography of mannequin” by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I’m actually re-reading “Homo Deus” by Yuval Noah Harari. If you aren’t familiar with it or him, he’s the historian who wrote the best selling “Sapiens” a few years back which told the story of Homo Sapiens based on what we know from 70,000 years ago up until the present. “Homo Deus” is more of a futurist take on what humans (at least some of us) might become in 25–300 years or so.

One of the big ideas in his book that in the future we will be ammortal, meaning you can still die if your body is subjected to something like being run over by a steamroller, but age and disease are problems tech will solve. At least for some of us . He makes it very clear that this could turn out to be something only the very wealthy and powerful benefit from. This is of course a mind blowing idea as it is, but it’s not the one that really spun my head.

On page 167 Harari talks about The Web of Meaning and objective, subjective, and inter-subjective reality. Objective reality is of course things like physics, chemistry, and biology, which all exist even if humans don’t. Subjective reality are things that I personally believe, but aren’t objectively true. I wore my lucky green shirt three years ago on Friday the 13th and nothing bad happened, so if I always wear it every Friday the 13th this will always be the case.

Inter-subjective reality though was a new idea for me. Maybe not new in that I understood that things like the economy and religion were not objectively real even though enough people believed in them and acted upon those beliefs to effect the world in major ways. It’s more about what that potentially means. Yuval Noah Harari claims that a lot of very wealthy people in Silicon Valley believe that being ammortal or at least the near indefinite ability to increase longevity is right around the corner. In fact, a lot of them are dumping tons of money into the research and development of it. And many of them also seem to be okay with the idea of using technology to augment and enhance our brains and bodies.

The important point though here is how we interpret “our”. As I said in the sentence a few paragraphs above in bold:

“At least for some of us .”

It’s possible that greatly extended lifespans and enhancements to the brain and body via genetic tinkering or through tech might only be available to the very wealthy. Even though things like cosmetic surgery are fairly routine it still remains out of reach for the majority of people in the world unless they are willing to go into debt or risk disastrous results to get it done cheaper.

What if in the near future the only people that can compete in high paying jobs, professional sports, or certain types of careers in the entertainment industry where good looks are essential are the ones who can afford to buy these sorts of advantages?“grayscale photography of man opening his mouth” by Gem & Lauris RK on Unsplash

Which brings me back to the Inter-subjective reality idea. My son is seven years old, but I think I’m still (along with everyone else not in the 1%) thinking in terms of the old middle class “silent desperation” model of go to college, get a job, work hard, and retire at 60ish. Assuming my son tries to follow that model he will hit the job market fresh from college somewhere around 2030 or so. I don’t think we will see Blade Runner style replicants or anything like that by 2030, but I have read a lot of articles that seem to indicate it is basically the legal and ethical questions that are holding us back or in check and not the lack of know how or tech. Not too mention all the very real indicators that if my son were to opt out of the college to job route by 2030 most of the blue collar jobs that he might do instead are going to be done by AI and robots.

“white and brown human robot illustration” by Franck V. on Unsplash

So, what’s a parent to do and think? I think about it a lot, but have no idea what to do. In 2012/2013 the Anarcho-Socialist in me was starting to believe that things were heading more in the direction of Social Democracy and that with a leader like Bernie in the White House maybe the impending loss of jobs might be at least somewhat mitigated by Universal Basic Income, but the political tide has shifted massively around much of the world at least for the next couple of years and possibly for many more years to come.

If it were just me I’m sure I could just buy an RV and live simple and cheap off whatever retirement I end up with and be perfectly happy. But the thought of such a seismic Inter-subjective reality shift happening during my life time makes me truly fear for my son’s future.

Homo Deus and My Head-Spinning Moments was originally published in The Ascent on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.